Big, Soft Sugar Cookies

These are the best sugar cookies I've ever made. Soft. Sweet. Moist. Melt in your mouth. You will be drooling as you bake these! They are perfect to decorate and bag for party favors as well. This is the cookie recipe I used for the favor at Jill's Baby Shower.

BIG SOFT SUGAR COOKIES 

(Recipe stolen from my wonderful Mother-in-Law)

 Ingredients:

♦ 1 1/2 cups Sugar

♦ 1 stick butter, softened

♦ 1/2 cup of shortening

♦ 3 eggs

♦ 1 tsp vanilla

♦ 3 1/2 cups flour

♦ 2 teaspoons baking powder

♦ 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 

Directions:

In a large bowl, blend together sugar, butter and shortening until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla until well-mixed. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. Gradually add the dry mixture to the wet mixture. Stir until well blended. Form dough mixture into a ball and place back in the bowl. Put plastic wrap over the bowl and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (I refrigerate my dough overnight).

After the cookie dough has been chilled, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Roll out the cookie dough on a floured surface (you can use powdered sugar for added sweetness instead of flour if you prefer). For a softer sugar cookie, roll out the dough thicker (I rolled out my dough to be a 1/3 inch thick). Cut out cookies using a cookie cutter and space 1/2 inch apart on a cookie sheet.

Depending on your size cookie cutter and the thickness of your dough will determine how long you will bake the cookies. It should be between 7-10 minutes. Just be sure to take the cookies out of the oven BEFORE the tops start to brown. If you bake them too long they will be crunchy, not soft.

After all of your cookies have cooled, frost them. I used Betty Crocker's canned vanilla frosting, but blended it with 1/2 cup of powdered sugar so that the frosting was thicker. Decorate as desired!

ENJOY YOUR BIG, SOFT SUGAR COOKIES!